Toolbox

Spring is finally approaching, and with it comes a familiar sound… the thud of a new phone book landing on the front porch. In our area, Jo and I are inundated with as many as 4 or 5 new phone books every Spring, from different publishers all trying to compete in the advertising biz. Of course nobody needs that many phone books, and I usually just toss all but one of them in the recycling bin, but this year I decided to try to upcycle one of them into something fun. I managed to turn one into a quirky and unique pen/pencil organizer that’s a real conversation piece on my desk!

Cut the phone book

The first step is to cut your phone book down to size. The finished pencil organizer should be between 3 and 4 inches tall, so that’s how much you’ll want to cut off the book. Use an aluminum T-square to keep things straight and a very sharp utility knife to make your cuts clean. Make several passes with the knife and go as far into the book as the knife will allow.

Before you can cut through the rest of the book, you need to fold the cut part out of the way, but the spine is stopping you. So take your knife and cut carefully through the spine, lining it up with the cut you already made on top. Now you can fold back the cut pages and continue cutting through the rest of the book, using the T-square as a guide.

When you’ve cut the book in two, use a pair of scissors to cut the front and back cover off, as close to the spine as you can.

Form the loops

Separate the pages of the book evenly into 5 sections, and put a binder clip on each section to hold it in place. If you want to get really creative here, you can try to find your own phone number or the number of your favorite pizza place. If you’re lucky enough, you can split a section on that page, and have that number visible on the outside of the finished loop!

Now we need to roll the spine up tightly in the middle. To do this, you need something to be in the middle for spine to curve around. Take a brand new pencil and cut it about 1 inch longer than the height of your book (no saw necessary — regular scissors will work). Using a hot glue gun, glue the pencil to the spine, lining up the bottom of the pencil with the bottom of the book (the part where you cut, which is not as smooth) and letting the eraser end stick up past the top of the book (the part that is nice and smooth).

Squirt a bunch of glue around the pencil and roll the book up around it, holding it in place until it’s set. Your book should no longer have a beginning or end, and the pencil will make a fun handle for picking up the organizer after it’s done.

To form the first loop, take one of the sections and remove the binder clip. Curve the entire section around a piece of cardboard tube, making sure that the pages are nice and smooth and forming a nice loop. When you have it in a position you like, put the binder clip back on.

You can see now that by bending the pages, the ends don't all line up anymore, but we need them to. Using a pair of scissors, cut off the ends of the pages so that they are once again square with each other. Then test the fit by putting it into the crease along the spine.

If it fits, glob a bunch of hot glue on the edge and push it back into the crease, securing your loop. Hold in place until the glue is set.

Repeat with the other four loops. You’ll be left with five wobbly loops around the center. Now we want to open those loops up a little and make the whole thing more secure. To do this, run a bead of hot glue along the side of one loop, about an inch or two away from the spine.

Then press the two loops together along this glue line and hold until set. Repeat for the other loops.

Decoupage the paper

You’ve got this really neat looking pencil holder now, but it is still weak. The pages aren’t stuck to each other and it’s all still flexible. We’re going to fix that with a few coats of decoupage medium (our favorite is Mod Podge). Using a 1″ wide, soft-bristled paint brush, glob the Mod Podge onto the top edges of the loops, making the individual pages all stick together. Don’t try to coat the inside or outside of the loops yet — just focus on the top edges where all the pages meet.

Let it dry then apply a second heavy coat, but this time go ahead and brush the Mod Podge on the inside and outside of the loops, and again on the top edges.

With two coats on, it’s time to flip it over and coat the bottom. Because of your pencil “handle”, the piece won’t sit flat on the table when it’s upside down, so cut a small length of cardboard tube and set the pencil inside that. It will make the perfect stand and keep your project stable. Put two generous coats of glue on the bottom, so that the pages are all firmly stuck together.

When you’re satisfied that you have enough coats of Mod Podge on the entire piece and it’s as firm as you want it, trace the bottom of it into a piece of black card stock. Cut the shape out, cover it with Mod Podge, and put it (glue side down) onto the bottom of the pencil holder. This bottom piece will keep your pencils from falling through.

With the card stock bottom in place, apply another liberal coat (or two) of Mod Podge to the exposed surface, to seal it. Having a full coat on both sides of the card stock will make it sturdier and prevent damage from the things you store in the holder later.

The finished result

When it’s all dry, go ahead and fill it with markers, pens, and pencils and add it to your desk.

So cool and functional, don’t you think?

Update: Multi-level and multi-colored!

At our reader Cindy’s suggestion, I created another phone book organizer with each compartment at a different level. I built it using the same basic steps as above, but the cutting part was a bit trickier. Here’s how to do it:

Cut the phone book to a height of 7 inches. Then divide the pages into 5 sections and secure each with a binder clip. Open the book so that just one section is flat on the table in front of you, and use a ruler to measure down 4 inches from the top of the book. Mark a line and use the ruler and utility knife to cut that section on the line, so that what’s left is only 3 inches tall.

To remove the unwanted part of the pages, put the blade of the knife down into the spine and cut through, removing the whole section in (hopefully) one piece.

Now fold the next section of pages down and measure again from the top, but this time marking it at only 3 inches. Cut on that mark and then again in the spine, to remove the section of pages from this layer. Continue on with the next two layers, marking and cutting them at 2 inches and 1 inch from the top. The final fifth layer will not need to be cut at all. When you’re done, you should have a nice stair-step effect with your sections, which will result in each compartment of your organizer being a different height. Glue the pencil to the middle and glue the sections in place just as you did before.

The only problem I had with this approach is that the ends of the pages in each section were all showing because the compartments were different heights, so there was nowhere to hide the hot glue and cut ends. I didn’t like the look of it at all, so I decided to try something new with this one… I painted it!

It no longer looks like a phone book, so it has lost a little bit of the quirky appeal, but I really love the colorful result I got by painting each petal a different color.

What DO you do with those old phone books that keep arriving on the doorstep? One of our readers suggested using them under a glue-gun to catch drips, ripping off pages when you need a fresh surface. But this idea is fantastic!

Missy, thanks for sharing the tip about getting removed from mailing lists. I’ve tried that a time or two myself, but I don’t think the list gets to the people actually delivering the phone books door-to-door (or if it does they don’t care.) It’s definitely worth a try, though!

Elaine said:
(March 19th, 2009 at 12:11 pm)

Phone Companies Take Notice…. this should be included on a page in their book! Wonderful!

When I cut the book at the beginning I used a bandsaw. It was a very quick cut and it ended up nice and straight. Try cutting it this way instead of using a knife. It ends up with a very nice cut. Thanks!

after you coat the whole thing and it dries you should be able to paint it with water colors

Danielle said:
(February 26th, 2010 at 7:56 pm)

Hi, I made 2 of these pencil holders and they came out great! The first one I made following your steps exactly but the second one I did a little differently. I didnt cut the ends of the pages to square them again before gluing into the loop position. It came out much better looking. It was more seamless than the 1st one.

Glad you love the idea, Arlene. We would love to see pictures of your scouts working on these organizers!

Bean said:
(July 26th, 2010 at 2:30 pm)

Hey, I have an idea to make a side table out of like 15 phone books we have at our office. Seriously, we got about 12 new phonebooks this year, it is ridiculous.

My idea is to drill a hole in the center of each phone book (I have several different sizes) and then stack them on a rod (like a cake decorator would do).

I was looking for ideas about how to paint them or to make them stiffer. Do you just recommend the modge podge? That seems like a good idea. Did you put the podge on before you painted that last project?

What a neat idea! I think Mod Podge would be a good idea. We did use it on our books before painting and it really stiffened the paper up. We’d love to see your finished table so please send us a pic when it’s done!

Peanuttyl38 said:
(September 11th, 2010 at 2:03 pm)

What a very neat idea. I’m 72 years young and going to give it a try as I am retired. If I do good with them, will make for Xmas gifts to my friends. Thanks again for the great idea.

I made one for the desk in my kitchen using an old recipe book that had lots of pictures. Thanks for the great idea. I work with special ed kids and use phone books to make foot stools as it is sometimes hard to obtain the right chair/desk height. Just cover them with duct tape, and the tape comes in great colors.

Hi Spike, and thanks for writing to us from Brazil! According to Google’s translation of your Portuguese, I think you’re asking if the multi-colored, multi-level organizer is made of wood. It’s actually a phone book just like the other one, but we painted each section with glossy craft paint after it was finished.

This is a really fun project. I was so happy to find it. For the past few weeks, I’ve been posting “Once A Book” projects on my blog on Saturdays. This project will fit in perfectly! I’ll be posting a link tomorrow. Stop by and say hi, and thanks for sharing this tutorial. ~ Olivia

I like this idea, I’m thinking I might just have to try it – we have Soooo many old phone-books laying around that I’ve often wondered why we’ve never gotten rid of them… maybe I just got my answer.

I did have a thought though – I really love the idea of the multi-layered one, but like you said, it lost some of the charm… I wonder how it would look if you just painted the top (or maybe even an inch or so onto the sides), so the bulk of it still had the phone-book design on it, but it had splashes of colour that hid the messy edges… Hmm, I wonder.

I am making one a bit taller for my kitchen utensils, one for an herb planter on my porch or a few linked together lined up on the rail like a flower box. Also cute for a bathroom caddy for Q-tips, cotton balls and make up sponges.

Heather said:
(August 3rd, 2011 at 10:52 am)

How thick would the phone book need to be? Ours here is not very thick, so I don’t know if the sections would be sturdy enough. I guess we could try one with fewer petals.
Thanks for the neat idea. Our phone books rarely get used. It is much faster and easier to look things up online!

Heather, the petals get pretty sturdy once you’ve coated them with several layers of Mod Podge, so you might be fine with a thinner book. It might be a good idea to go with four petals instead of fine, too. Or maybe you could use two books at once?

Wow, Cassandra, you got really fancy! Thanks so much for sharing those photos with us. They look great

swarna said:
(January 1st, 2012 at 9:35 am)

awesome!!

Harry said:
(January 31st, 2012 at 9:42 am)

Absolutely wonderful!!!!!!!!!!

Rolien said:
(April 3rd, 2012 at 11:01 am)

Hi Chica and Jo,

I’m starting a blog about reusing garbage and other materials. I was looking for things to make w/ a phonebook and found this! Can i please use your image? Of course i’Äºl put a link to your site. You can check it out at http://www.klikokunst.com~rolien/wordpress/p=254
ItÅ› in dutch, and the link is at the word “hier”, at the bottom of the article.

Rolien, you are welcome to use our photo on your blog as long as you credit it to us and link to our site. Thanks for asking!

swetha said:
(May 28th, 2012 at 12:24 am)

wow it is just ausome , amazing .

may said:
(July 10th, 2012 at 4:59 am)

it’s so beautiful guys.. woww

Jenny U said:
(July 10th, 2012 at 6:16 am)

So clever – and green too!!I love inventive ideas!

Charity said:
(August 6th, 2012 at 8:41 pm)

Thank you so much for this tutorial! Me and my husband had a habit of losing our phonebooks. (Which no longer happens, due to planning out a single spot for it to go and keeping it there.) Last Christmas we got a big box from my hubby’s brother and his wife. It was a huge stack of phonebooks, haha! So I have been trying to think of what to do with them.

I made one today and it turned out so cute! I made the two different level one in the shape of a butterfly and completely covered it in Mod Podge Sparkle. I will try to post a picture as soon as I locate my camera. Thanks again!

Rose, I haven’t worked with PVA glue enough to know if it will dry to a clear, hard finish like Mod Podge or other decoupage mediums would. You could try putting some on a few pages of a phone book and let it dry and see if you like the result.

TRISHNA AGARWAL said:
(September 2nd, 2012 at 2:37 am)

I REALLY REALLY LOVED IT.
AND I MADE IT IN MY SCHOOL COMPETITION.

Jena Gorham said:
(September 11th, 2012 at 7:56 am)

Love the idea. I find the unpainted version has more character, but I’m not a fan of the bright “yellow” pages look. I think I’m going to try “antiquing” mine. Maybe with tea? or antiquing gel? Maybe a transparent white wash? or weak bleach solution? Any ideas? Do you think mod podge will work okay over an antiquing gel?